My dear Nathan,--You, who provide the public with such delightful
dreams through the magic of your imagination, are now to follow me
while I make you dream a dream of truth. You shall then tell me
whether the present century is likely to bequeath such dreams to the
Nathans and the Blondets of the year 1923; you shall estimate the
distance at which we now are from the days when the Florines of the
eighteenth century found, on awaking, a chateau like Les Aigues in the
terms of their bargain.

My dear fellow, if you receive this letter in the morning, let your
mind travel, as you lie in bed, fifty leagues or thereabouts from
Paris, along the great mail road which leads to the confines of
Burgundy, and behold two small lodges built of red brick, joined, or
separated, by a rail painted green. It was there that the diligence
deposited your friend and correspondent.

On either side of this double pavilion grows a quick-set hedge, from
which the brambles straggle like stray locks of hair. Here and there a
tree shoots boldly up; flowers bloom on the slopes of the wayside
ditch, bathing their feet in its green and sluggish water. The hedge
at both ends meets and joins two strips of woodland, and the double
meadow thus inclosed is doubtless the result of a clearing.

These dusty and deserted lodges give entrance to a magnificent avenue
of centennial elms, whose umbrageous heads lean toward each other and
form a long and most majestic arbor. The grass grows in this avenue,
and only a few wheel-tracks can be seen along its double width of way.
The great age of the trees, the breadth of the avenue, the venerable
construction of the lodges, the brown tints of their stone courses,
all bespeak an approach to some half-regal residence.

Before reaching this enclosure from the height of an eminence such as
we Frenchmen rather conceitedly call a mountain, at the foot of which
lies the village of Conches (the last post-house), I had seen the long
valley of Aigues, at the farther end of which the mail road turns to
follow a straight line into the little sub-prefecture of La Ville-aux-
Fayes, over which, as you know, the nephew of our friend des Lupeaulx
lords it. Tall forests lying on the horizon, along vast slopes which
skirt a river, command this rich valley, which is framed in the far
distance by the mountains of a lesser Switzerland, called the Morvan.
These forests belong to Les Aigues, and to the Marquis de Ronquerolles
and the Comte de Soulanges, whose castles and parks and villages, seen
in the distance from these heights, give the scene a strong
resemblance to the imaginary landscapes of Velvet Breughel.

If these details do not remind you of all the castles in the air you
have desired to possess in France you are not worthy to receive the
present narrative of an astounded Parisian. At last I have seen a
landscape where art is blended with nature in such a way that neither
of them spoils the other; the art is natural, and the nature artistic.
I have found the oasis that you and I have dreamed of when reading
novels,--nature luxuriant and adorned, rolling lines that are not
confused, something wild withal, unkempt, mysterious, not common. Jump
that green railing and come on!

When I tried to look up the avenue, which the sun never penetrates
except when it rises or when it sets, striping the road like a zebra
with its oblique rays, my view was obstructed by an outline of rising
ground; after that is passed, the long avenue is obstructed by a
copse, within which the roads meet at a cross-ways, in the centre of
which stands a stone obelisk, for all the world like an eternal
exclamation mark. From the crevices between the foundation stones of
this erection, which is topped by a spiked ball (what an idea!), hang
flowering plants, blue or yellow according to the season. Les Aigues
must certainly have been built by a woman, or for a woman; no man
would have had such dainty ideas; the architect no doubt had his cue.

Passing through the little wood placed there as sentinel, I came upon
a charming declivity, at the foot of which foamed and gurgled a little
brook, which I crossed on a culvert of mossy stones, superb in color,
the prettiest of all the mosaics which time manufactures. The avenue
continues by the brookside up a gentle rise. In the distance, the
first tableau is now seen,--a mill and its dam, a causeway and trees,
linen laid out to dry, the thatched cottage of the miller, his
fishing-nets, and the tank where the fish are kept,--not to speak of
the miller's boy, who was already watching me. No matter where you are
in the country, however solitary you may think yourself, you are
certain to be the focus of the two eyes of a country bumpkin; a
laborer rests on his hoe, a vine-dresser straightens his bent back, a
little goat-girl, or shepherdess, or milkmaid climbs a willow to stare
at you.

Presently the avenue merges into an alley of acacias, which leads to
an iron railing made in the days when iron-workers fashioned those
slender filagrees which are not unlike the copies set us by a writing-
master. On either side of the railing is a ha-ha, the edges of which
bristle with angry spikes,--regular porcupines in metal. The railing
is closed at both ends by two porter's-lodges, like those of the
palace at Versailles, and the gateway is surmounted by colossal vases.
The gold of the arabesques is ruddy, for rust has added its tints, but
this entrance, called "the gate of the Avenue," which plainly shows
the hand of the Great Dauphin (to whom, indeed, Les Aigues owes it),
seems to me none the less beautiful for that. At the end of each ha-ha
the walls of the park, built of rough-hewn stone, begin. These stones,
set in a mortar made of reddish earth, display their variegated
colors, the warm yellows of the silex, the white of the lime
carbonates, the russet browns of the sandstone, in many a fantastic
shape. As you first enter it, the park is gloomy, the walls are hidden
by creeping plants and by trees that for fifty years have heard no
sound of axe. One might think it a virgin forest, made primeval again
through some phenomenon granted exclusively to forests. The trunks of
the trees are swathed with lichen which hangs from one to another.
Mistletoe, with its viscid leaves, droops from every fork of the
branches where moisture settles. I have found gigantic ivies, wild
arabesques which flourish only at fifty leagues from Paris, here where
land does not cost enough to make one sparing of it. The landscape on
such free lines covers a great deal of ground. Nothing is smoothed
off; rakes are unknown, ruts and ditches are full of water, frogs are
tranquilly delivered of their tadpoles, the woodland flowers bloom,
and the heather is as beautiful as that I have seen on your mantle-
shelf in January in the elegant beau-pot sent by Florine. This mystery
is intoxicating, it inspires vague desires. The forest odors, beloved
of souls that are epicures of poesy, who delight in the tiny mosses,
the noxious fungi, the moist mould, the willows, the balsams, the wild
thyme, the green waters of a pond, the golden star of the yellow
water-lily,--the breath of all such vigorous propagations came to my
nostrils and filled me with a single thought; was it their soul? I
seemed to see a rose-tinted gown floating along the winding alley.

The path ended abruptly in another copse, where birches and poplars
and all the quivering trees palpitated,--an intelligent family with
graceful branches and elegant bearing, the trees of a love as free! It
was from this point, my dear fellow, that I saw a pond covered with
the white water-lily and other plants with broad flat leaves and
narrow slender ones, on which lay a boat painted white and black, as
light as a nut-shell and dainty as the wherry of a Seine boatman.
Beyond rose the chateau, built in 1560, of fine red brick, with stone
courses and copings, and window-frames in which the sashes were of
small leaded panes (O Versailles!). The stone is hewn in diamond
points, but hollowed, as in the Ducal Palace at Venice on the facade
toward the Bridge of Sighs. There are no regular lines about the
castle except in the centre building, from which projects a stately
portico with double flights of curving steps, and round balusters
slender at their base and broadening at the middle. The main building
is surrounded by clock-towers and sundry modern turrets, with
galleries and vases more or less Greek. No harmony there, my dear
Nathan! These heterogeneous erections are wrapped, so to speak, by
various evergreen trees whose branches shed their brown needles upon
the roofs, nourishing the lichen and giving tone to the cracks and
crevices where the eye delights to wander. Here you see the Italian
pine, the stone pine, with its red bark and its majestic parasol; here
a cedar two hundred years old, weeping willows, a Norway spruce, and a
beech which overtops them all; and there, in front of the main tower,
some very singular shrubs,--a yew trimmed in a way that recalls some
long-decayed garden of old France, and magnolias with hortensias at
their feet. In short, the place is the Invalides of the heroes of
horticulture, once the fashion and now forgotten, like all other
heroes.

A chimney, with curious copings, which was sending forth great volumes
of smoke, assured me that this delightful scene was not an opera
setting. A kitchen reveals human beings. Now imagine me, Blondet, who
shiver as if in the polar regions at Saint-Cloud, in the midst of this
glowing Burgundian climate. The sun sends down its warmest rays, the
king-fisher watches on the shores of the pond, the cricket chirps, the
grain-pods burst, the poppy drops its morphia in glutinous tears, and
all are clearly defined on the dark-blue ether. Above the ruddy soil
of the terraces flames that joyous natural punch which intoxicates the
insects and the flowers and dazzles our eyes and browns our faces. The
grape is beading, its tendrils fall in a veil of threads whose
delicacy puts to shame the lace-makers. Beside the house blue
larkspur, nasturtium, and sweet-peas are blooming. From a distance
orange-trees and tuberoses scent the air. After the poetic exhalations
of the woods (a gradual preparation) came the delectable pastilles of
this botanic seraglio.

Standing on the portico, like the queen of flowers, behold a woman
robed in white, with hair unpowdered, holding a parasol lined with
white silk, but herself whiter than the silk, whiter than the lilies
at her feet, whiter than the starry jasmine that climbed the
balustrade,--a woman, a Frenchwoman born in Russia, who said as I
approached her, "I had almost given you up." She had seen me as I left
the copse. With what perfection do all women, even the most guileless,
understand the arrangement of a scenic effect? The movements of the
servants, who were preparing to serve breakfast, showed me that the
meal had been delayed until after the arrival of the diligence. She
had not ventured to come to meet me.

Is this not our dream,--the dream of all lovers of the beautiful,
under whatsoever form it comes; the seraphic beauty that Luini put
into his Marriage of the Virgin, that noble fresco at Sarono; the
beauty that Rubens grasped in the tumult of his "Battle of the
Thermodon"; the beauty that five centuries have elaborated in the
cathedrals of Seville and Milan; the beauty of the Saracens at
Granada, the beauty of Louis XIV. at Versailles, the beauty of the
Alps, and that of this Limagne in which I stand?

Belonging to the estate, about which there is nothing too princely,
nor yet too financial, where prince and farmer-general have both lived
(which fact serves to explain it), are four thousand acres of
woodland, a park of some nine hundred acres, the mill, three leased
farms, another immense farm at Conches, and vineyards,--the whole
producing a revenue of about seventy thousand francs a year. Now you
know Les Aigues, my dear fellow; where I have been expected for the
last two weeks, and where I am at this moment, in the chintz-lined
chamber assigned to dearest friends.

Above the park, towards Conches, a dozen little brooks, clear, limpid
streams coming from the Morvan, fall into the pond, after adorning
with their silvery ribbons the valleys of the park and the magnificent
gardens around the chateau. The name of the place, Les Aigues, comes
from these charming streams of water; the estate was originally called
in the old title-deeds "Les Aigues-Vives" to distinguish it from
"Aigues-Mortes"; but the word "Vives" has now been dropped. The pond
empties into the stream, which follows the course of the avenue,
through a wide and straight canal bordered on both sides and along its
whole length by weeping willows. This canal, thus arched, produces a
delightful effect. Gliding through it, seated on a thwart of the
little boat, one could fancy one's self in the nave of some great
cathedral, the choir being formed of the main building of the house
seen at the end of it. When the setting sun casts its orange tones
mingled with amber upon the casements of the chateau, the effect is
that of painted windows. At the other end of the canal we see Blangy,
the county-town, containing about sixty houses, and the village
church, which is nothing more than a tumble-down building with a
wooden clock-tower which appears to hold up a roof of broken tiles.
One comfortable house and the parsonage are distinguishable; but the
township is a large one,--about two hundred scattered houses in all,
those of the village forming as it were the capital. The roads are
lined with fruit-trees, and numerous little gardens are strewn here
and there,--true country gardens with everything in them; flowers,
onions, cabbages and grapevines, currants, and a great deal of manure.
The village has a primitive air; it is rustic, and has that decorative
simplicity which we artists are forever seeking. In the far distance
is the little town of Soulanges overhanging a vast sheet of water,
like the buildings on the lake of Thune.

When you stroll in the park, which has four gates, each superb in
style, you feel that our mythological Arcadias are flat and stale.
Arcadia is in Burgundy, not in Greece; Arcadia is at Les Aigues and
nowhere else. A river, made by scores of brooklets, crosses the park
at its lower level with a serpentine movement; giving a dewy freshness
and tranquillity to the scene,--an air of solitude, which reminds one
of a convent of Carthusians, and all the more because, on an
artificial island in the river, is a hermitage in ruins, the interior
elegance of which is worthy of the luxurious financier who constructed
it. Les Aigues, my dear Nathan, once belonged to that Bouret who spent
two millions to receive Louis XV. on a single occasion under his roof.
How many ardent passions, how many distinguished minds, how many
fortunate circumstances have contributed to make this beautiful place
what it is! A mistress of Henri IV. rebuilt the chateau where it now
stands. The favorite of the Great Dauphin, Mademoiselle Choin (to whom
Les Aigues was given), added a number of farms to it. Bouret furnished
the house with all the elegancies of Parisian homes for an Opera
celebrity; and to him Les Aigues owes the restoration of its ground
floor in the style Louis XV.

I have often stood rapt in admiration at the beauty of the dining-
room. The eye is first attracted to the ceiling, painted in fresco in
the Italian manner, where lightsome arabesques are frolicking. Female
forms, in stucco ending in foliage, support at regular distances
corbeils of fruit, from which spring the garlands of the ceiling.
Charming paintings, the work of unknown artists, fill the panels
between the female figures, representing the luxuries of the table,--
boar's-heads, salmon, rare shell-fish, and all edible things,--which
fantastically suggest men and women and children, and rival the
whimsical imagination of the Chinese,--the people who best understand,
to my thinking at least, the art of decoration. The mistress of the
house finds a bell-wire beneath her feet to summon servants, who enter
only when required, disturbing no interviews and overhearing no
secrets. The panels above the doorways represent gay scenes; all the
embrasures, both of doors and windows, are in marble mosaics. The room
is heated from below. Every window looks forth on some delightful
view.

This room communicates with a bath-room on one side and on the other
with a boudoir which opens into the salon. The bath-room is lined with
Sevres tiles, painted in monochrome, the floor is mosaic, and the bath
marble. An alcove, hidden by a picture painted on copper, which turns
on a pivot, contains a couch in gilt wood of the truest Pompadour. The
ceiling is lapis-lazuli starred with gold. The tiles are painted from
designs by Boucher. Bath, table and love are therefore closely united.

After the salon, which, I should tell you, my dear fellow, exhibits
the magnificence of the Louis XIV. manner, you enter a fine billiard-
room unrivalled so far as I know in Paris itself. The entrance to this
suite of ground-floor apartments is through a semi-circular
antechamber, at the lower end of which is a fairy-like staircase,
lighted from above, which leads to other parts of the house, all built
at various epochs--and to think that they chopped off the heads of the
wealthy in 1793! Good heavens! why can't people understand that the
marvels of art are impossible in a land where there are no great
fortunes, no secure, luxurious lives? If the Left insists on killing
kings why not leave us a few little princelings with money in their
pockets?

At the present moment these accumulated treasures belong to a charming
woman with an artistic soul, who is not content with merely restoring
them magnificently, but who keeps the place up with loving care. Sham
philosophers, studying themselves while they profess to be studying
humanity, call these glorious things extravagance. They grovel before
cotton prints and the tasteless designs of modern industry, as if we
were greater and happier in these days than in those of Henri IV.,
Louis XIV., and Louis XVI., monarchs who have all left the stamp of
their reigns upon Les Aigues. What palace, what royal castle, what
mansions, what noble works of art, what gold brocaded stuffs are
sacred now? The petticoats of our grandmothers go to cover the chairs
in these degenerate days. Selfish and thieving interlopers that we
are, we pull down everything and plant cabbages where marvels once
were rife. Only yesterday the plough levelled Persan, that magnificent
domain which gave a title to one of the most opulent families of the
old parliament; hammers have demolished Montmorency, which cost an
Italian follower of Napoleon untold sums; Val, the creation of
Regnault de Saint-Jean d'Angely, Cassan, built by a mistress of the
Prince de Conti; in all, four royal houses have disappeared in the
valley of the Oise alone. We are getting a Roman campagna around Paris
in advance of the days when a tempest shall blow from the north and
overturn our plaster palaces and our pasteboard decorations.

Now see, my dear fellow, to what the habit of bombasticising in
newspapers brings you to. Here am I writing a downright article. Does
the mind have its ruts, like a road? I stop; for I rob the mail, and I
rob myself, and you may be yawning--to be continued in our next; I
hear the second bell, which summons me to one of those abundant
breakfasts the fashion of which has long passed away, in the dining-
rooms of Paris, be it understood.

Here's the history of my Arcadia. In 1815, there died at Les Aigues
one of the famous wantons of the last century,--a singer, forgotten of
the guillotine and the nobility, after preying upon exchequers, upon
literature, upon aristocracy, and all but reaching the scaffold;
forgotten, like so many fascinating old women who expiate their golden
youth in country solitudes, and replace their lost loves by another,--
man by Nature. Such women live with the flowers, with the woodland
scents, with the sky, with the sunshine, with all that sings and skips
and shines and sprouts,--the birds, the squirrels, the flowers, the
grass; they know nothing about these things, they cannot explain them,
but they love them; they love them so well that they forget dukes,
marshals, rivalries, financiers, follies, luxuries, their paste jewels
and their real diamonds, their heeled slippers and their rouge,--all,
for the sweetness of country life.

I have gathered, my dear fellow, much precious information about the
old age of Mademoiselle Laguerre; for, to tell you the truth, the
after life of such women as Florine, Mariette, Suzanne de Val Noble,
and Tullia has made me, every now and then, extremely inquisitive, as
though I were a child inquiring what had become of the old moons.

In 1790 Mademoiselle Laguerre, alarmed at the turn of public affairs,
came to settle at Les Aigues, bought and given to her by Bouret, who
passed several summers with her at the chateau. Terrified at the fate
of Madame du Barry, she buried her diamonds. At that time she was only
fifty-three years of age, and according to her lady's-maid, afterwards
married to a gendarme named Soudry, "Madame was more beautiful than
ever." My dear Nathan, Nature has no doubt her private reasons for
treating women of this sort like spoiled children; excesses, instead
of killing them, fatten them, preserve them, renew their youth. Under
a lymphatic appearance they have nerves which maintain their
marvellous physique; they actually preserve their beauty for reasons
which would make a virtuous woman haggard. No, upon my word, Nature is
not moral!

Mademoiselle Laguerre lived an irreproachable life at Les Aigues, one
might even call it a saintly one, after her famous adventure,--you
remember it? One evening in a paroxysm of despairing love, she fled
from the opera-house in her stage dress, rushed into the country, and
passed the night weeping by the wayside. (Ah! how they have
calumniated the love of Louis XV.'s time!) She was so unused to see
the sunrise, that she hailed it with one of her finest songs. Her
attitude, quite as much as her tinsel, drew the peasants about her;
amazed at her gestures, her voice, her beauty, they took her for an
angel, and dropped on their knees around her. If Voltaire had not
existed we might have thought it a new miracle. I don't know if God
gave her much credit for her tardy virtue, for love after all must be
a sickening thing to a woman as weary of it as a wanton of the old
Opera. Mademoiselle Laguerre was born in 1740, and her hey-day was in
1760, when Monsieur (I forget his name) was called the "ministre de la
guerre," on account of his liaison with her. She abandoned that name,
which was quite unknown down here, and called herself Madame des
Aigues, as if to merge her identity in the estate, which she delighted
to improve with a taste that was profoundly artistic. When Bonaparte
became First Consul, she increased her property by the purchase of
church lands, for which she used the proceeds of her diamonds. As an
Opera divinity never knows how to take care of her money, she
intrusted the management of the estate to a steward, occupying herself
with her flowers and fruits and with the beautifying of the park.

After Mademoiselle was dead and buried at Blangy, the notary of
Soulanges--that little town which lies between Ville-aux-Fayes and
Blangy, the capital of the township--made an elaborate inventory, and
sought out the heirs of the singer, who never knew she had any. Eleven
families of poor laborers living near Amiens, and sleeping in cotton
sheets, awoke one fine morning in golden ones. The property was sold
at auction. Les Aigues was bought by Montcornet, who had laid by
enough during his campaigns in Spain and Pomerania to make the
purchase, which cost about eleven hundred thousand francs, including
the furniture. The general, no doubt, felt the influence of these
luxurious apartments; and I was arguing with the countess only
yesterday that her marriage was a direct result of the purchase of Les
Aigues.

To rightly understand the countess, my dear Nathan, you must know that
the general is a violent man, red as fire, five feet nine inches tall,
round as a tower, with a thick neck and the shoulders of a blacksmith,
which must have amply filled his cuirass. Montcornet commanded the
cuirassiers at the battle of Essling (called by the Austrians Gross-
Aspern), and came near perishing when that noble corps was driven back
on the Danube. He managed to cross the river astride a log of wood.
The cuirassiers, finding the bridge down, took the glorious
resolution, at Montcornet's command, to turn and resist the entire
Austrian army, which carried off on the morrow over thirty wagon-loads
of cuirasses. The Germans invented a name for their enemies on this
occasion which means "men of iron."[*] Montcornet has the outer man of
a hero of antiquity. His arms are stout and vigorous, his chest deep
and broad; his head has a leonine aspect, his voice is of those that
can order a charge in the thick of battle; but he has nothing more
than the courage of a daring man; he lacks mind and breadth of view.
Like other generals to whom military common-sense, the natural
boldness of those who spend their lives in danger, and the habit of
command gives an appearance of superiority, Montcornet has an imposing
effect when you first meet him; he seems a Titan, but he contains a
dwarf, like the pasteboard giant who saluted Queen Elizabeth at the
gates of Kenilworth. Choleric though kind, and full of imperial
hauteur, he has the caustic tongue of a soldier, and is quick at
repartee, but quicker still with a blow. He may have been superb on a
battle-field; in a household he is simply intolerable. He knows no
love but barrack love,--the love which those clever myth-makers, the
ancients, placed under the patronage of Eros, son of Mars and Venus.
Those delightful chroniclers of the old religions provided themselves
with a dozen different Loves. Study the fathers and the attributes of
these Loves, and you will discover a complete social nomenclature,--
and yet we fancy that we originate things! When the world turns upside
down like an hour-glass, when the seas become continents, Frenchmen
will find canons, steamboats, newspapers, and maps wrapped up in
seaweed at the bottom of what is now our ocean.

[*] I do not, on principle, like foot-notes, and this is the first I
have ever allowed myself. Its historical interest must be my
excuse; it will prove, moreover, that descriptions of battles
should be something more than the dry particulars of technical
writers, who for the last three thousand years have told us about
left and right wings and centres being broken or driven in, but
never a word about the soldier himself, his sufferings, and his
heroism. The conscientious care with which I prepared myself to
write the "Scenes from Military Life," led me to many a battle-
field once wet with the blood of France and her enemies. Among
them I went to Wagram. When I reached the shores of the Danube,
opposite Lobau, I noticed on the bank, which is covered with turf,
certain undulations that reminded me of the furrows in a field of
lucern. I asked the reason of it, thinking I should hear of some
new method of agriculture: "There sleep the cavalry of the
imperial guard," said the peasant who served us as a guide; "those
are their graves you see there." The words made me shudder. Prince
Frederic Schwartzenburg, who translated them, added that the man
had himself driven one of the wagons laden with cuirasses. By one
of the strange chances of war our guide had served a breakfast to
Napoleon on the morning of the battle of Wagram. Though poor, he
had kept the double napoleon which the Emperor gave him for his
milk and his eggs. The curate of Gross-Aspern took us to the
famous cemetery where French and Austrians struggled together
knee-deep in blood, with a courage and obstinacy glorious to each.
There, while explaining that a marble tablet (to which our
attention had been attracted, and on which were inscribed the
names of the owner of Gross-Aspern, who had been killed on the
third day) was the sole compensation ever given to the family, he
said, in a tone of deep sadness: "It was a time of great misery,
and of great hopes; but now are the days of forgetfulness." The
saying seemed to me sublime in its simplicity; but when I came to
reflect upon the matter, I felt there was some justification for
the apparent ingratitude of the House of Austria. Neither nations
nor kings are wealthy enough to reward all the devotions to which
these tragic struggles give rise. Let those who serve a cause with
a secret expectation of recompense, set a price upon their blood
and become mercenaries. Those who wield either sword or pen for
their country's good ought to think of nothing but of doing their
best, as our fathers used to say, and expect nothing, not even
glory, except as a happy accident.

It was in rushing to retake this famous cemetery for the third
time that Massena, wounded and carried in the box of a cabriolet,
made this splendid harangue to his soldiers: "What! you rascally
curs, who have only five sous a day while I have forty thousand,
do you let me go ahead of you?" All the world knows the order
which the Emperor sent to his lieutenant by M. de Sainte-Croix,
who swam the Danube three times: "Die or retake the village; it is
a question of saving the army; the bridges are destroyed."

Now, I must tell you that the Comtesse de Montcornet is a fragile,
timid, delicate little woman. What do you think of such a marriage as
that? To those who know society such things are common enough; a well-
assorted marriage is the exception. Nevertheless, I have come to see
how it is that this slender little creature handles her bobbins in a
way to lead this heavy, solid, stolid general precisely as he himself
used to lead his cuirassiers.

If Montcornet begins to bluster before his Virginie, Madame lays a
finger on her lips and he is silent. He smokes his pipes and his
cigars in a kiosk fifty feet from the chateau, and airs himself before
he returns to the house. Proud of his subjection, he turns to her,
like a bear drunk on grapes, and says, when anything is proposed, "If
Madame approves." When he comes to his wife's room, with that heavy
step which makes the tiles creak as though they were boards, and she,
not wanting him, calls out: "Don't come in!" he performs a military
volte-face and says humbly: "You will let me know when I can see you?"
--in the very tones with which he shouted to his cuirassiers on the
banks of the Danube: "Men, we must die, and die well, since there's
nothing else we can do!" I have heard him say, speaking of his wife,
"Not only do I love her, but I venerate her." When he flies into a
passion which defies all restraint and bursts all bonds, the little
woman retires into her own room and leaves him to shout. But four or
five hours later she will say: "Don't get into a passion, my dear, you
might break a blood-vessel; and besides, you hurt me." Then the lion
of Essling retreats out of sight to wipe his eyes. Sometimes he comes
into the salon when she and I are talking, and if she says: "Don't
disturb us, he is reading to me," he leaves us without a word.

It is only strong men, choleric and powerful, thunder-bolts of war,
diplomats with olympian heads, or men of genius, who can show this
utter confidence, this generous devotion to weakness, this constant
protection, this love without jealousy, this easy good humor with a
woman. Good heavens! I place the science of the countess's management
of her husband as far above the peevish, arid virtues as the satin of
a causeuse is superior to the Utrecht velvet of a dirty bourgeois
sofa.

My dear fellow, I have spent six days in this delightful country-
house, and I never tire of admiring the beauties of the park,
surrounded by forests where pretty wood-paths lead beside the brooks.
Nature and its silence, these tranquil pleasures, this placid life to
which she woos me,--all attract. Ah! here is true literature; no fault
of style among the meadows. Happiness forgets all things here,--even
the Debats! It has rained all the morning; while the countess slept
and Montcornet tramped over his domain, I have compelled myself to
keep my rash, imprudent promise to write to you.

Until now, though I was born at Alencon, of an old judge and a
prefect, so they say, and though I know something of agriculture, I
supposed the tale of estates bringing in four or five thousand francs
a month to be a fable. Money, to me, meant a couple of dreadful
things,--work and a publisher, journalism and politics. When shall we
poor fellows come upon a land where gold springs up with the grass?
That is what I desire for you and for me and the rest of us in the
name of the theatre, and of the press, and of book-making! Amen!

Will Florine be jealous of the late Mademoiselle Laguerre? Our modern
Bourets have no French nobles now to show them how to live; they hire
one opera-box among three of them; they subscribe for their pleasures;
they no longer cut down magnificently bound quartos to match the
octavos in their library; in fact, they scarcely buy even stitched
paper books. What is to become of us?

If this letter, dashed off by the idlest pen of the century, had not
by some lucky chance been preserved, it would have been almost
impossible to describe Les Aigues; and without this description the
history of the horrible events that occurred there would certainly be
less interesting.

After that remark some persons will expect to see the flashing of the
cuirass of the former colonel of the guard, and the raging of his
anger as he falls like a waterspout upon his little wife; so that the
end of this present history may be like the end of all modern dramas,
--a tragedy of the bed-chamber. Perhaps the fatal scene will take
place in that charming room with the blue monochromes, where beautiful
ideal birds are painted on the ceilings and the shutters, where
Chinese monsters laugh with open jaws on the mantle-shelf, and
dragons, green and gold, twist their tails in curious convolutions
around rich vases, and Japanese fantasy embroiders its designs of many
colors; where sofas and reclining-chairs and consoles and what-nots
invite to that contemplative idleness which forbids all action.

No; the drama here to be developed is not one of private life; it
concerns things higher, or lower. Expect no scenes of passion; the
truth of this history is only too dramatic. And remember, the
historian should never forget that his mission is to do justice to
all; the poor and the prosperous are equals before his pen; to him the
peasant appears in the grandeur of his misery, and the rich in the
pettiness of his folly. Moreover, the rich man has passions, the
peasant only wants. The peasant is therefore doubly poor; and if,
politically, his aggressions must be pitilessly repressed, to the eyes
of humanity and religion he is sacred.